


domestic appetite

by revecake



Category: Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Domestic, Explicit Sexual Content, First Meetings, Flashbacks, Getting Together, M/M, They Are Married Your Honor, food and eating and appetite metaphors as a love language, i just want emiya to love his husband, lapslock, the freeloader's guide of how to get you a man - eat your way into his lonely heart, told through
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:27:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29530542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revecake/pseuds/revecake
Summary: emiya admires how his husband eats: with bared teeth, snarling lips, the raw glistening appreciation in his eyes as he tears into and slathers his food with complete animal enthusiasm.his appetite is voracious, to say the least.
Relationships: Cú Chulainn | Lancer/Heroic Spirit EMIYA | Archer, 槍弓 - Relationship
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	domestic appetite

**Author's Note:**

> i just think they're neat~

_breakfast is the first commitment_

emiya wakes at 5:10 on a thursday morning.

beyond the screen door, in the open space of the courtyard, the dogs are already yipping and calling with a great, enthusiastic hunger.

and wrapped around emiya’s thigh, clinging to his left side is another one of his overgrown dogs.

“ _urgh_ ,” emiya grunts. cú, asleep, seems to agree with a guttural snore.

it’s 5:10 am, he’s awake 10 minutes too late, and he is still weak and tender from last night, and the smothering affection is overwhelming—and maybe he wants to be grumpy and honest and cling to his husband too.

another bark sounds. cú grumbles and he presses that unbearable heat tighter against emiya’s side.

emiya checks the tiny digital clock again, red bars casting dim light on tatami floors. cú claws loosely at his waist, legs flailing from the sudden flare of cold sunshine. 5:12 now. emiya blindly and neatly shoves that arm back into the blankets and slips a discarded shirt over his head.

pants, pants somewhere. slippers. smeared glasses.

in the mornings, he lays his husband in his disgruntled repose to take care of the dogs first.

kanshou and bakuya, they tug him together as a perfect pair around the bright grounds. fuzzy yin-and-yang, intertwining, inversing, reversed and parallel once more.

for two wolf-dogs, they’ve always been docile, extraordinarily well-behaved, with no spirit to scratch at the wooden gate or make untimely midnight calls to the moon.

“good boy.” kanshou pants, a bright glint of his teeth in his dark, furry muzzle.

“good girl.” bakuya rumbles, a deep sound that settles with a familiar ache in emiya’s chest.

the morning light filters through his lopsided glasses, refracting the day into something more distant, and yet, suddenly prescient with a pang of sweet heartache - and he almost trips with the sharp turn the black and white pair take.

towards the front gate — emiya looks through the glistening sheen.

as with most everything, meetings begin at the front door.

what he reminisces through the vision of glass sunshine is a distant grey, rainy morning.

he had been wearing a dark _kimono_ that day; pressed and starched around his arms, the cold reminder of a cruel, long-passed sadness draped like a weight around his open throat.

dark and stifled like the hint of kiritsugu emiya. for the weather and some recúrsive sense of self-loathing, he had decided to pull kiritsugu’s old skin over his own.

it was on such a day, soaked with tangible loneliness that cú chulainn had appeared at his front gate.

like his namesake, a myth, a figment of light upon bright hair and red eyes, his sudden presence seemed something out of a story.

a fairytale happenstance, a meeting of pure imagination.

(“call it fate, luck of the irish,” cú will coo, a bother smugly wrapped around his back, and emiya is always loathing, incredulous - what kind of contemporary nightmare is this, an irishman in japan, appearing at his front doorstep, no less.

he had been loud and bright enough in that heavy rain, enough to have pierced through the grey shroud before emiya’s dull eyes.

“you look nothing like an irishman,” emiya will offend in his blunt reply, but—

‘child of light’ indeed).

but, in this moment, he had just been another bothersome stranger. emiya had thought, peering at the man’s soaked grin through the surreal chill of early morning rain.

“big house you’ve got here,” he says, throwing in a rogue-ish slip of canines when emiya refuses to return his greeting. or offer the kindness of his open door.

emiya cocks his head, a hard knot lodged between his brows - _loitering at my front step; get out if you have nothing better to say_.

cú doesn’t seem fazed, not the instant irrational hurt or the _there, there,_ soothing gazes that are sure they only need a pound of patience and mindless sympathy to understand that emiya’s brusque manner is a front for his deep loneliness.

they’d be right, but the loneliness that curls beneath his skin is no one else’s business but his own.

there’s an equal roughness to cú’s heavy eyes. sardonic, like he’d be willing to play along with emiya’s bad attitude but he doesn’t. senses somehow it would irritate him more.

plainly, he shrugs, a soaked mop of blue hair. “well, i’ll leave now if you insist.”

there’s that kind of flat amusement to him; run and stop - come and go. like he’d simply skip back out into the rain in his soaked form if emiya so much as bit out a parting command. he’s happily transient, a lackadaisical wanderer, and that realization, that this strange meeting would surely end here — it gives emiya pause.

his entire existence may be a collection of sad-pathetic-lonely impressed into the shape of a man, but he has yet to turn the cruelty of his self-loathing unto others.

not being nice, he tells himself, turning quickly from cú’s slick red stare. the weighted gap at the front gate remains open.

no, he grits his teeth stubbornly as he gathers a bowl of quick leftovers - plain rice and pickled cabbage - and that should be it, the bare amount he’s willing to spare, but then he’s breathing out a quick, fiery sigh and before he can hesitate, he adds a dry cut of pork.

he shoves the glass lunchbox against cú’s chest, and just for today, just today, he promises himself, he’s _not_ taking pity on strays—

the handle of traditional spindled umbrella jabs through the front door too.

in the rain, cú stands with his hands full, a dumb kind of confusion wetting his sharp face, hair drooping like a dog’s mane over his neck.

it suits him, emiya allows himself to smirk. 

“leave when the rain lets up,” and with that, he closes the wooden gates without any more hesitation.

so, he doesn’t quite feel the same guilt, the same swell of blame that takes the habitual accusing tone of his own voice —

in the shower, the annoyance of having to wash the sheen of cold rain from his hair, his skin, because he gave his own umbrella away to some random mutt, makes his mind turn again to the rough tangle of blue strands.

he had such long, fine, strange hair. emiya’s hands unconsciously still in the mop of his own.

he should - wash it out, use cold water and a clean, natural shampoo to take care of it, comb it through, as thorough as possible to the tips with oil. this kind of man, rough and bright and entirely too casual in his existence, he wouldn’t understand the painstaking care that should go into something delicate like this.

emiya blinks, shampoo running down his temples, tracing his feet before slipping across the wooden slats to drain.

guilty. he’s caught himself thinking of cú like some stray in need of a good wash and then, a good home. a rough weapon that could use some oil for the artifact of once magnificent edges. a new wrapping cloth too.

there’s no reason for this kind of contemplation. he turns off the shower, towels himself dry, and staunchly sits with his wet hair, stiff robes, and he does not think of a strange man as a stray dog or a stained blade, unearthed and waiting for his attention.

still, for the rest of that day, he stares out through the dim glow of the front door, as if he could see past the gate and any shameless, lingering presence that might return there.

two weeks later, he takes home two quietly affectionate wolf-dogs; two because the black hound had stuck to the white one’s side, and no, of course emiya couldn’t separate them as they had wound, a looping yin and yang, around his legs too.

it’s an indulgence, plain and simple, and he tells himself—enough. the odd guilt is for once, quiet in his mind.

after kanshou and bakuya, cú with his shameless companionship is truly not far behind.

.

breakfast today: _tamagoyaki_ to be made with _dashi_ stock, and for a more full-bodied taste, a spoonful of seafood soup to melt the unbroken grains of red sugar.

admittedly, it’s an old recipe, caught up in the rote but kept tradition of kiritsugu’s dusty estate.

but, emiya digresses. he wants to indulge.

the way to roll the mix of egg and its other condiments is a deceptive amateur’s trick; the more you hesitate, the quicker those fancy layers melt and fall apart. utilize the wrist and flick the pan to let the natural heft of the tool do all the work for you. this is what he’s told to each of cú’s failed attempts, and in return, he receives a retort that he’s being an unbearably smug bastard.

he is, but he’s also right. he’s the smug bastard that lays the bowls, chopsticks and steaming dishes to perfection after all.

routine domesticity is something he’s grown into.

he doesn’t need to turn to expect cú’s sudden embrace. the man presses himself entirely, without restraint, over emiya, then under his arms, up, up and completely around him. a vehemence in stifling any possible distance between them.

cú has a tough kind of casual intensity to his touch. a relentless squeeze around the ribs, the panting pressure of his chest, complete with the locking hook of his chin. emiya has realized this as idle thought, thorough in his in-person observation, all made at his own expense.

often, cú holds him like he’d like to pick him up, resistant 78 kg and all, just because he can. as he has proven himself very capable of before.

as it is, emiya is making their breakfast with a deft hand around a hot pan, and cú is very aware of this. he halts his affectionate threat. 

still, a mouth winds its way from the back of his shoulder to press neatly to his neck. a wandering hand that pushes roughly at the folds of the apron to settle on the neat, heated swell of emiya’s chest.

cú breaks the silence with light laughter, grazing teeth over skin in a wide yawn. “ _heh,_ morning.” he smells, fresh out of the shower, like the damp musk of their shared bed.

crude. but emiya loves that part of him too.

he cuts off a bit of the _tamagoyaki_ , still steaming, and—

he means to sample the initial sweetness, how it balances against the steam, how well it holds the air soaked from the heated pan, but an eager mouth shoots past him. _snaps_ , with a kind of smug satisfaction, around the tips of the chopsticks.

and of course, it’s emiya’s turn to be smug. 

“bleugh—!”

“it’s only half-done, idiot,” he murmurs, cutting his chopsticks through another layer. this time, he peeks his tongue at the yolk. a little thick, slick at the back of his palate, coating, pleasurably over the seam of his lips. when he pulls the chopsticks away, a trail lingers. cú follows.

it’s heavy, sharp like the indent of errant teeth. a bare stink of morning breath too.

“tastes like you,” he comments offhandedly as cú remains at his shoulder, watching with hungry eyes between his mouth and the glistening egg rolls in the pan.

breakfast is done soon after, as cú teases the edge of his teeth against the underside of his jaw, and emiya alternates between maneuvering around him and indulging him in turn.

the dogs eat outside on the _engawa,_ a mash of stewed yams mixed with the brand of kibble that changes every other month according to cú’s wandering fancy.

they, with neat bowls of _miso_ and the plated _tamagoyaki_ with a side of pickled _daikon_ , eat decently at the low table.

well, emiya does. nothing cú does with his mouth, that unrestrained appetite, is ever decent.

case in point: “you really laid on the sugar today, huh?” that mouth says, smiling wide and smeared with sticky yellow.

emiya reaches over, “is that a complaint?” prim, as if unamused, but his bare thumb on cú’s bottom lip, curled down to meet his touch, says otherwise.

“ha—nope. you know i’ll eat anything you make.”

emiya makes an entirely noncommittal sound, and as breakfast goes, there’s more of a mess to clean up than he ever plans for.

a mess like cú’s sharp pink mouth coated entirely in the gloss of the cut _tamagoyaki._

emiya tastes the impression of it on his own finger. a sweet, sweet heaviness that instantly dissolves like grits of sugar sunshine, slipping down the back of his throat.

“it’s almost overdone,” he notes, dismissive,

and cú, as honest as he has ever been, grins, lunges, and bites off the entire roll from emiya’s proffered chopsticks anyway.

at the front door, cú cranes down from the shoe-step landing, and naturally, emiya huffs and tilts up to meet him. the height difference is always something of playful contention, to be used against one another when the chance arises.

his mouth tastes like sugared egg with the rich grit of seafood soup, a teaspoon of full-bodied flavor, and as cú relentlessly presses further, chasing with the hard angle of his jaw alone, opening wide, wider,

like heat, heat and the casual hunger that tends to rise at the start of the day, following the hint of breakfast.

“you hound—” emiya exhales, forcing himself away. there’s a terribly embarrassing sound that _pops_ , sticks between them, but,

“that’s me,” cú shamelessly purses the seam of his mouth over emiya’s bare forehead anyway.

then, he steps back, reigns himself in with no seeming effort at all, crossing his arms as he leans against the open sunshine flooding the wide hallway. in the mismatch of emiya’s black shirt, his own sweatpants, no underwear, he proudly lavishes in the taste of emiya’s cooking on his lips.

“have a good day~旦那さん.”

emiya rolls his eyes, entirely unruffled despite the state of his mouth, and tosses a wave through the gap of the sliding door.

for them, it’s a morning like any other.

_let’s sit, talk, and eat in full over lunch_

“fancy seeing you here again - and, wow,” a blatant whistle, appraising red eyes, a pointed smile, “look at you, all dressed up, _professor_.”

emiya should immediately shoot down such a comment — he _lives_ here and he _is_ a professor, albeit an inactive one, but he’s tenured and those bastards on the board can’t get rid of him even if he decided to waste the next decade by submitting publications on rusty japanese kitchen knives.

but, the obnoxious acquaintance, not a stranger, no, not even emiya can deny that odd feeling that they’re the kind of personalities that have clashed before - he turns his crooked grin to the two hounds at emiya’s side instead.

“and who are these darlings? oh, hello, hello—!”

they slobber openly along cú’s chin, into his laughing mouth, across the same flashing white teeth as emiya has to stand there, stoic and bearing the betrayal of affection.

enough of the spit-exchange. he tugs on their leashes, black, then white, and they retreat obediently.

“what’re their names, huh?” cú asks, still squated at their snouts, grinning up at emiya like the sly stray dog he is.

emiya has not thought about this. the ancient antiques in the university display already have their names engraved in neat placards, honored in printed black text with every official publication.

the dogs always come as a pair; he’s never had to call for one, when the other is soon to follow.

in the end, he decides with painstaking shame. “kuro...and...shiro.”

“wow.”

cú rises, haphazardly settling his hand on his sticky chin in faux contemplation. “you really are terrible at this.”

“at what—”

he’s cut off before he can even truly register the offense, a flash of wild blue and singing silver speared at the tip of his nose.

and then, cú is dancing away again, to his side. the motion of him is an erratic and jarring sequence, and emiya would pin him down somehow, make him pause in one frame, if only to make the dizzying irritation between his eyes go away.

as if by sudden magic, an inexplicable sleight of hand, the white leash is stolen right from his clenched palm. replaced instead by a fresh plastic bag.

cú tilts his head towards the exchange, like it’s a natural thing to offer a gift like this.

“at making friends, old man.”

and he’s being pulled along, already strolling with shiro towards the front gate.

“you—i’m barely 28!”

emiya follows, _forced_ , and when he pushes past the wooden doors, the immensely mundane action of the bag crinkling, dogs yipping - somehow, in this sudden bustle, cú is welcomed in too.

out of the fresh plastic bag comes a fresh catch: a sole, whole in its flat, paddle-like body.

emiya recalls the mild sweetness of it, a bitter memory now mixed with the ashes of kiritsugu’s cigarettes that would drift into the pan.

so, he shaves off the scales and in a hasty, half-aware effort, he stews the sole with all its bones, with only thin slices to open up its meat, in a light mix of dried pepper and soup stock to sharpen the taste.

fuyuki’s resident freeloader lounges in front of the tv, glancing between the noontime news and lingering on the view of the apron tied at emiya’s back.

cue: a changing of the channels, the bright mundane notes of an opening jingle followed by the greeting of a tv audience.

with a kind of rude finesse only he has mastered, emiya lays out their impromptu noon-time meal.

“ah, well then.” cú grins, twirling the chopsticks that emiya had placed, so nicely, so neatly with sudden parallel impact across his bowl. “ _頂きます_ _.”_

there is a silent derision from emiya’s side of the table, and somehow, anxiety, waiting apprehension.

he watches as cú stabs his chopsticks into the first bit of the sole’s stomach, picks out an ample piece of white flesh, then, in one bite of rice-and-fish, he wraps his mouth, his _teeth,_ entirely around the chopstick tips.

nothing needs to be said; he grins around the mouthful at emiya, puffing steam with a flash of his red tongue.

emiya’s own bowl is poised, untouched in his raised hand.

for the first time, he watches cú eat with a terrifying raw, animal enthusiasm.

and just as emiya had given in, just once, once as he had told himself before, to the open slobber of his dogs licking across his mouth, to the stray taking shelter at his door from the rain — he is simultaneously, terribly endeared to cú’s appetite now.

now, after having torn through half of the poor, dead fish already, cú spouts flecks of praise: “man, you’re really good at this! you sure you’re not married already to some lucky bastard?”

emiya pointedly ignores the compliment - the rice and oil stuck to cú’s lips - as he takes his own prim bite of stewed sole.

-

it’s a little pathetic, he thinks, to sit in the same spot kiritsugu did, in the same old, bare-fashioned _kimono_.

“do you really think he’ll be back,” he mutters aloud anyway, to no one, to the empty moon, to the black and white dogs cúrled over each leg.

(“oh--i forgot your bowl,” cú swings haphazardly in place, blue hair dancing over his shoulder, and emiya was so sure, so sure that he could close the gates and finally find his old peace from such a loud, stilted lunch.

he tries bluntness, to put up a hard wall against all that wild motion, “it’s fine—”

“-and your umbrella too,” cú sidesteps him again and this time, he slips through the doorway out of his own volition.

“don’t worry; i’ll give ‘em back next time.”

and he’s left, gone with one last promise of a smile with glinting teeth — leaving emiya to close up after him and the whirlwind trail of confusion he’s left in his wake).

kuro - a temporary name, emiya is _determined_ now to find an alternative - huffs against his thigh. in his loneliness, he takes that sound from his dog to mean a sympathetic _of course not_.

on the other side, with her snout dug into the crevice of his stomach, shiro glances up at him with an acuteness that should just be a play of moonlight in her smart, dark eyes.

it feels like an outward projection, an amused accusation of the self.

_but here you are, hoping that he will._

stubbornly, emiya shakes the pair of talking hounds from his lap and retires for the night.

-

there is no surprise to the sight of cú crouched in front of the heavy traditional gates but—

the erratic jump and subsequent fizzle of excitement from emiya’s throat, all the way to the hottest, hardest parts of his gut, feels like the worst form of betrayal.

cú grins, wild blue and sly, almost feline red, and it is terribly violent, how good he looks in the clash of color about him; pale face, sharp hair, and faded hawaiian shirt.

“i’ve got your bowl,” he dangles another plastic bag, an implied weight swinging within it.

“though, about your umbrella. _heh_ , i thought it’d be better to bring it back on a rainy day,” cú says, somehow believing himself to be sly with this outright confession of his plans.

emiya resolutely steps around him without another word. he leaves the front gate open behind him.

lunch today: chicken gizzards, fresh and bloody from the pier-side market. the added stink from nearby fish makes the whole thing almost unbearable to cook.

emiya throws in as much dried chili as he could bear to eat, and then, a few more sliced bits of ginger for good measure. the meat is fried until its blood darkens from center to surface and its edges cúrl, harden into chewy tendons. the leftover soup is a sludgy precipitate of meat grime and hot oil, all mixing together into a glimmering brown sheen.

emiya barely chews through more than five tough, teeth-grinding pieces.

cú tears through the entire platter, slathering his tongue, the pointed tips of his teeth on the tiny bits of meat. all the while, he pants intensely, enjoyably from the intense heat.

“ha—” he sighs at the end of his meal, leaning back with a searing burp, “was all that spice necessary?”

“you didn’t have to eat everything,” emiya supplies uselessly. _in fact, you didn’t have to come eat at all._ his ears feel hot, oddly.

“well,” and there’s that sly, self-confident grin, “who else could you feed that to?”

that’s right; not even to his precious twin black-and-white hounds.

for the first time, emiya is smugly amused. “so, you’re saying you’re more of a mutt than an actual dog.”

cú’s red stare sharpens, and his grin does not flicker. stained with the dry juices of chicken gizzards, his mouth turns to emiya, an open maw with glistening teeth, as if still hungry.

“perhaps. would you feed me again if i said i was?”

for that, the way emiya’s half-empty, trembling stomach surges in betrayal, he steals the plate out from the gluttonous threat of cú’s mouth for his dogs instead.

they lick away the sauce, the remaining essence of the meat, and emiya is content with allowing them this post-meal snack as cú’s eyes remain, lax and admiring on his back.

“next time,” emiya starts brusquely, pauses, presses his lips together with a hard frown.

he breathes out his demand in a rush, “next time, bring vegetables instead. meat is too hard to cook properly on the spot.”

“oh,” cú meets his brash exhale with his own eager gasp. beyond the gate, the outline of him seems to tremble, vibrate with promise.

emiya can see it, all those flying dust motes, alighting on his blue hair, broad shoulders, practically turned into miniature blessings in the sunlight.

cú smiles, “will do, young master,” and he leaves in his jaunty, dancing tap-step, his casual-come-and-go.

this time, there’s something more excitable to him, the lingering turn of his heels as he leans back into the empty air. a feeling that he’ll come back just as soon as he leaves.

emiya pushes the heavy gate shut, and just like that, in the innocuous, resounding rumble of the wide house around him, rhythm has settled into his life once more.

-

emiya visits the university in the morning, and when he returns, a light folder in hand, he meets cú for their impromptu late lunch.

cú has so earnestly honored his request: not one, not two, but three bags, the plastic stretched to a soft balloon around veins of green.

“what did you do, rob a farmer’s market?” he grumbles, setting each batch aside. white heads of nappa cabbage, small baby bok choi, the half-green and funny yellow of chinese mustard — and for whatever reason, an entire dirt-creased white radish.

“hey, you asked; i provide,” cú barks from the table, sprawled on his side and already fiddling with the tv, with the bare cúshions, even taking peeks at the thin folder emiya threw onto the floor.

today’s meal, entirely vegetarian, with enough to pre-prep for another week-and-a-half of breakfast side dishes. emiya shreds a small chunk of the radish into snowflakes and lightly fries it with bright cuts of carrot. the bok choy goes in last, sealed in with heavier grease, taken from the preserved fat of meat, and as the vegetables turn, tumble, the entire room fogs up with a sweet, pungent heat.

the rest of the radish, he saves, planning to preserve as a pickled dish.

cú pouts before the steaming, spring-colored mix, but he catches every strip, every thin cut between his teeth anyway. lips pursing, curling as if unused to such plain delicacies.

it’s funnier for emiya, watching his attempts at taking whole mouthfuls of such a loose meal.

easier on the eyes too, without the heavy grease of meat, the toughness of it that requires stretching lips and the wild hint of tongue.

“no leftovers for kuro and shiro today,” cú says, and still, he taunts with a satisfied yawn, canines peeking out, pushing mindlessly at them with his tongue.

“kanshou and bakuya,” emiya corrects on instinct, if only to avoid acknowledging his own lingering stare.

they were the reason for his visit today, a determination to dig through old files to find that first, dear project. a pair of twin swords unearthed in a ruined burial field, with no glory, no blood to their name. but they had been found fitted to one another, and it had always struck emiya, that in the unforgiving wear of history’s cycles of ruin and re-discovery, they had managed to retain the marks of their name and each other.

cú tests out the sounds. they are rougher and somehow turn infinitely more affectionate in the cradle of his mouth.

“you’re the kind of man who would name his dogs after old swords, huh?”

emiya is not sure what he means to say with that, with that crooked grin of his. as if he knows emiya well enough to make fun of him like they’re sly old friends. 

“yes,” he replies simply, confused.“i am.”

“well,” and cú’s expression turns lascivious now, eyes dark and laughing, “i’ve got a good bit of experience with handling spears myself.”

a crude wink follows.

emiya does not even deign to see him out today. cú laughs to himself as he pulls the gates shut, and inside, emiya sits at the table and hides his harsh chuckles against his knuckles.

-

with the sink glistening, gleaming from constant use, and the countertop almost always spilling with fresh ingredients, emiya realizes —

he spends too much of his days cooking. cooking and cleaning and then, preparing, planning, thinking over the ingredients to cook again.

he’s settled into a rhythm and the realization of this knocks him into an impossible disequilibrium.

starkly, he becomes aware, too-late, already elbow deep in a warm tub of dishes, amassed from a full lunch and the sudden desire to clean out the previous bunch of pickled mustard leafs to make room for a new batch. 

when he examines the dark skin of his hands, they are soap-slick and flushed pink from the warm water.

the temporary wrinkles on them are soft and fold, press, rise like dough beneath his touch.

he’s let himself be fooled into a mindless contentment, and it is all terribly _mundane._

emiya kicks a huge pile of compost out by the yard with an immense sense of vicious helplessness, at his sad lonely life being overtaken by busy domesticity like this. the wet vegetable bits from cú’s daily lunch batch spill over, and the purposeful mess makes him feel better, if only slightly confused in his sudden viciousness.

so, for that reason only, because spite is no better a source of motivation than for a man like emiya, he storms back into active teaching.

.

even after years of settling into impromptu domesticity, emiya is still a demonstrably severe professor.

demonstrably, because if you know when to look, what to ask, prompt and tease, you’ll have him opening up, a routine spot of sunshine in the cycle of solid sky and clouds. you’ll catch some people rubbing their cheeks into the stink of old books; you’ll find emiya, softened in the same way, with his glasses turned towards the careful edge of an old blade, tracing the arch of it into its former glory.

case in point: rin easily interrupts his lunchtime under the lone dappled tree beneath his office.

“there you are—archer!”

again, it’s by routine only that he does not glare at her for startling him.

no professor, no dr. emiya, no professionalism at all — and she knows it, knows just how much emiya adores her for all her bold disrespect.

slyly, she’s teased him about it before too, how much she must remind him of someone else equally worthy of adoration and exasperation.

today, “congratulations!” she shoves a tentative roster his way, and of course, emiya sets aside the entirety of lunch, of the bench, of his attention for her.

“ _unlimited blade works: an abridged history of ancient weapons_ is at full capacity.” she flips through the four pages, all 44 students, “and already, 10 waitlist requests.”

he sighs. it’s entirely rin’s fault that his class has such a catchy name.

“congratulations indeed,” he says, plucking the roster from her, “you’ll have to deal with at least 23 freshmen asking you if you get to ‘play’ with the swords.”

she rolls her eyes with a prim intolerance at that, and emiya can’t help but wrinkle his brows and smile under the dappled shade. best TA, two years and running, for somehow getting on the returning professor’s good graces and firmly sticking herself there, at his side.

“well, it’s the spring semester — you’ll be doing the actual shooting demo when we visit caladbolg, and then i’ll teach all the new kids to call you archer too.”

terrible. almost as bad as the late afternoon emiya had returned for a forgotten stack of essays, and cú had trailed along. by the worst sense of serendipity, rin had met his husband that day, spinning around a replica lance with distracted ease, and the two of them had gotten on incorrigibly well.

‘lancer and archer,’ she had termed them with an approving, sly nod. ‘it fits,” she pairs her hands together, not perfectly, but as a complement that works somehow, side-by-side. ‘you suit each other.’

cú had laughed at that, a barking affirmation; it is likely that he loves the title even more for all the crude jokes he can make.

and for emiya, he experiences the distinct pains of a permanent migraine whenever the two are in the same room together.

still, “good work,” he sighs, smiles as an unconscious afterthought, “once again you’ve managed to give me the burden of a full semester.”

“you’re welcome,” she replies, completely proud of herself. without missing a beat, she turns her bright eyes over to his half-eaten lunch, tossing her hair over her shoulder with a kind of predicted precision.

“so,” she leans closer shamelessly, “when can i come visit?”

his phone lights up with a small alert: a picture of cú’s lunch by the market-side, simple deep-fried bits of _shishamo_ that he makes on his own portable gas-stove, paired with some rice heated from last night.

rin oohs over the picture, and emiya doesn’t bother trying to hide the phone from her when cú sends a handsome post-meal selfie, his messy mouth wide with grinning teeth, blue hair blazing against the bright specks of grey ocean.

neatly, he steals the phone back from her hands, and invites her over for dinner on the weekend.

_welcome home for dinner_

this time, when he makes the lonely, begrudging walk home, he is wet from the blue rain, and cú is the one who is waiting for him, barely damp. he stands there, at the front gates, as if greeting his own home with his back facing emiya, his hair lightly speckled and curling under the edge of the umbrella.

emiya doesn’t know what to do--when he pauses, emotions soaking, slipping from his empty stomach all the way to his shoes.

most urgently, emiya wants to come up behind that familiar figure, stumble without fear of falling over the cobblestone,

(because if he did, he would want to fall against cú anyway)

bury his face into the pale crook of his nape and ask and plead as he goes soft and weak and wet inside, _i’m sorry. will you stay? stay and hold me here because i’ve grown so cold and tired of myself too_.

he doesn’t. his throat is too parched and dishonest for any admission of truth. he’s blustered so much and so well before cú’s incorrigible displays of affection that now - emiya has made of himself, an irrevocably rigid coward.

instead, he resorts to accusations, daring to meet the flashing red of cú’s eyes in the grey drenching storm: “so, you’ve finally decided to return my umbrella.”

cú turns in a flash of ringing silver, concedes with a sharp grin, and it’s strange. he has no right to sound as soft and relieved as he does, with his rough voice in the crashing rain. with his eyes, soaked red by blue, as they watch emiya in his infuriating entirety.

emiya wishes with a guilty, foreign ache, that he’d look away.

“that’s right—” yet, unabashedly he smiles, an expression tempered with open, sharp teeth, “i’m back.”

the heels of emiya’s shoes scrape over the wet stones, and he opens the door with a desperate, heaving push.

“hurry up and come inside already.”

in the soaking warmth of the house, of kanshou and bakuya intertwining their bodies around their legs, emiya’s first instinct again is to bluster:

“don’t expect me to make anything good,” he huffs, stepping out of the wet, creaking dress shoes. the twin dogs urge him on, brushing the rain from his slacks onto their glimmering pelts.

he continues to grumble, “showing up in the middle of a storm - how long would you have waited for a free meal in this weather - shameless,” to cover up the sudden familiarity of his path towards the kitchen, with cú following behind him, with the dogs wagging along.

cú’s hands around his shoulders stop him.

“you—” he huffs, and emiya is forced to remain still, flinching when a steady weight drops against his nape. a touch so hot, skin-to-skin, he becomes aware of how numb he was to his own cold. so cold that his stomach was a dry channel all the way through his throat to his mouth, and now — he’s suddenly warm enough to taste his own choking, spit-filled gasp.

“you’re insufferable,” cú says, laughing into the arched space of emiya’s back and somehow, the sound comes out strained.

with a self-taunting sort of curiosity, emiya wants to turn, to see the kind of expression he could never imagine on a man like cú.

“as if,” he scoffs, and cú’s burning grip finally allows him the momentary freedom, the brush of wet friction.

but he keeps emiya there, resolutely meeting his eyes — and only his eyes.

his wry smile, a peeking canine, hints towards the soaked tableau of emiya’s shirt, the low appraisal of it around his collarbones, tracing the swell of his chest.

“i can wait a little longer,” and he nods with his unflinching gaze. in their amusement, those light red eyes, they grow rich with hunger. maroon, like caramelized blood. almost, spilled over. 

“so—ah, why don’t you shower first? the host should be presentable before the guest, after all.”

the hot, wet ache surges inside emiya, until he can’t tell whether it started from the beating chest or the empty stomach because it has spread all the way to the heat of his face now, and he excuses himself from cú’s grip before the sensation can overwhelm him. before he does something like spill himself, in all his shriveled sad glory, irrevocably into cú’s palms.

(before the heavy steam can cover the bathroom entirely, he catches a glimpse of his own reflection.

the shower does nothing to cool his head, the dull red on his nose, his ears, the lurid tip of his mouth. the warm water pounds past his hair, his shoulders, as he closes his eyes, and it’s plain — the pure, embarrassing desire, beating, beating, beating behind his muffled palms.

and _this_ , stained blatantly onto the twist of his mouth, cú had watched, rapt, in its entirety).

for their first impromptu, storm-side dinner, emiya is almost openly ready to show his shock.

cú pauses, on his third bowl of rice, served with only a stale stock of pickled vegetables and cheap beer. he arches a brow cleanly, tips the empty bowl towards emiya again.

“you want...more?”

“sure,” a non-committal agreement, but cú grins, too sure of himself in the face of emiya’s bland surprise. “if you have any left.”

emiya takes the bowl with more force than necessary. he can’t name the strange welling emotion at the back of his throat. it makes him frown, like he’s angry, perpetually dissatisfied, but it also pushes at his teeth, makes his gums ache, like if he opened his mouth, he’d bite down on something, something entirely too tender—

forget the rice, he remains there, folded on his knees, scowling at the clean spit-shine of the bowl in his hands.

it’s not just about the food, is it.

“hm? what isn’t?” cú blinks, unevenly, as if his appetite has finally been satisfied. or at least, become temporarily sleepy.

emiya could kick him out now, and he would go, wander the world for new and temporary novelties, a traveler’s uncaring fancy, but today he was here again, waiting in the rain— and the realization that slipped from emiya’s mouth grows in its pounding headache, heartache.

slowly, he says aloud, “you’d stay, just for more leftover rice and stale beer.”

“yeah,” unconsciously, cú flicks a wide tongue over his canines, hungry again as he catches a stray drop from his lip. he shrugs, just as he would do, with a complete lack of worry in a raging storm, in complete unawareness of emiya’s roiling turmoil. “tastes good, anyways.”

“would you.” emiya forces himself to set aside the bowl. to push it into cú’s hands, brave and dumb perhaps, finally an acknowledgemnt of some begruding truth in the way that he allows his fingers to linger. “would you want to stay for dinner and eat more then.”

cú answers without a thought, with only the driving force of his heart and his insatiable appetite. “yeah, ‘course. if you’d make it for me.”

“alright,” emiya says, and it feels like his first breath. the realization, that he wants cú to stay and he will, because he asked, shakes him to the bottom of his half-full stomach. “alright.”

(“ah,” cú will sigh many months later, brisk and yet reclined at his bare back, kissing over the tender line of emiya’s spine. “i should’ve known that was your way of proposing. ‘eat my dinner for life mutt,’ ha— !”

“be quiet. you agreed didn’t you,” a mutter, an elbow that jabs with no intention of really dislodging the embrace.

“as always,” cú croons, ending his tease with one last press of his lips, marking the hot blush on emiya’s nape with a cool nip of teeth, “you’re growing more honest everyday.”)

even after three bowls of rice, for their first dinner together, emiya marks the occasion with a serving of dessert.

a simple three-ingredient crème brûlée: two eggs, a generous spoonful of old ice-cream, practically rotten with ice, and a caramelized coating of brown sugar.

it takes more than thirty minutes to toast the sugar into an even, hard cap, but when he does, when cú has the pleasure of striking the first sonorous _tap!_ with his spoon and he practically drools, drips with renewed appetite into the yellow puff that swells over the sugared fractures — it’s entirely worth the effort.

for their first late-night dessert, emiya watches the dessert drop, melt, stain a pale cream over the tip of cú’s tongue, and even though he keeps his own mouth hidden and firmly shut against his propped palm, he swears he can taste the same sweetness, running up and down the wet ache of his jaws.

-

in the absolute headache of restarting his academic career and preparing meals for a welcome intruder, emiya averages his own 1.5 meals every day. a spare breakfast, usually shortened so he can walk the dogs, something even quicker for lunch on-campus, and then — dinner.

he cooks so much now, in preparation, in post-haste; dishes filled again with cuts of meat, full-bodied, stewed with spices, seared until they drip and overflow with fragrant oil. with the stark renewed taste of raw life.

in truth, he’s never really had a preference of his own for meat before he met cú.

in truth, no matter how much he makes, he’s still left hungry.

he starves himself over cú, over his endless appetite. emiya taunts, teases at his own yawning hunger with the very way cú eats. first, teeth. then, the tip of the tongue, and— entirely, as if the first bite was just a tease, the wet gape of his mouth as he swallows the thing, the food, whatever it is he’s enjoying, whole. complete with an unapologetic scrape of teeth, bared into a smile.

and emiya finds himself staring, wanting with the same gross saliva filling his mouth, wetting his own appetite. the ache in his gums that starts perpetually when it is not his food but the expanse, the almost careless offer of cú’s pale nape arched below his wild blue hair.

so emiya cooks, not despite but because of his hunger.

\--and it is his own idiocy, that he never notices, that he always looks away. but in these moments of misdirection, cú is always looking at him. he is still there, remaining after every meal, fed and full and still, with that same casual, waiting hunger.

-

the empty desire in him that threatens every day, every-meal, stretching from evenings in the kitchen to the bright night upon the _engawa_ , to displace the dried-up loneliness, swell over his mouth, and swallow the shell of him whole —

a desire that should threaten to make a person honest.

in emiya’s case, he gets even better, grows even more stubborn in denying himself such truths.

he ignores, contradicts, and is betrayed by those desires in turn.

at times like these, where the dogs have lead him out into the open yard, and so cú, follows, strolling to sprawl at his side - a scene upon the solitary moon, just two people sitting in the pause of idle life -

cú smokes, just like kiritsugu would do on these cold nights, and all emiya wants to do now, as an adult who has long lost the wonder for glittering smoke clouds that seemed to hold stars, is to justify his petulance at wanting a taste of the bitter ash.

cú catches his eye, as he so often does with a sly grin. with the cancer stick propped at the crooked edge of one lip, with a can of cheap beer dangled over spread knees.

naturally, emiya resorts to a blustering offense. “how did you even survive on your own before?”

“hey— ! i’m grateful and all, but i lived just fine cooking on my own. the wonders a portable gas burner and some chicken can do for dinner on the go.” cú barks back, and the curl of his lips flicks ash into the air.

emiya’s body betrays him. he’s not distracted, but pulled back into focus, always, a perpetual focus that sharpens at the edges, until his vision is shaky with the moon’s bare light, making him dizzy wherever he glances - everywhere, except at cú.

he makes the first mistake of unconsciously licking at his own mouth.

but cú is the one that commits the ultimate offense of giving him a taste.

and he tastes like the slick traces of beer, like the chewed end of tobacco with a sweet, souring, burning smoke, as expected and yet, it’s all too much of a bitter surprise.

when cú pries open his mouth with his tongue, emiya bites down before he can fill the empty space of him, overwhelm him entirely.

he doesn’t mean to. the fresh burst of cú’s blood hits his teeth in a shock anyway.

“ _shit.”_

cú jerks away with a trail of pale pink still connecting them. with emiya’s hand still holding the collar of his shirt like he might yank him back in — but on cú’s bleeding tongue, a tender ring of teeth that has ruined every possibility of an accepted kiss.

he looks wild - red eyes flashing, his own teeth bared on the verge of biting, breaking into his own lip. yet, with the soft ease of his rough mouth, cú acknowledges his mistake first, a kind of hasty frustration as he drags his palm back through his hair.

the cigarette in his fingers jostles, and ash crumbles between them.

“i read something wrong, didn’t i--,”

emiya lets go immediately, as he should have done, as he should have never let his hand press between them in the first place,

he hides it, the heat of cú’s body smeared as an undeniable evidence over his palm, against his face.

“you should go.”

there is only a single drawn breath of hesitation when cú scrabbles to his feet, to leave emiya in his own pathetic self-contradictions.

and whether for his own benefit or emiya’s, he leaves the empty beer can with a trace of his mouth on the thin, silver lip. the cigarette too, burnt out, with the chewed end holding the harsh marks of his teeth against the smooth wood.

it’s already all used up, is the weakness that emiya allows himself as he smokes the last bits of ash, with his mouth around the imprint of cú’s own beneath the moon.

.

for dinner, emiya comes home in the bustling evening to cú attempting a miniature smoke bomb in the kitchen.

as it turns out, after a hurried groping for the pot lid, he stifles the steam and the alarming sparks of a weak fire — cú had been trying to fry _edamame_.

“this a new achievement for you,” emiya wonders aloud, stirring his chopsticks through the remains. truly, somehow cú has managed to plaster all the beans into a tar-like sludge along the cúrved bottom.

he manages to pry one green lump free, chewing it as he contemplates cú’s guilty, puppy-dog face.

even the wild blue spikes of cú’s hair seems to droop. emiya’s expression gives nothing away.

“if you’re going to spit it out, just tell me,” he says, a bluffing growl that fades into a real whimper, “so i can avoid the horror of your distaste.”

emiya smirks. “it’s edible enough.”

“ _hush_ , you,” cú grits out, smiling with his teeth glancing with a bite over emiya’s harsh mouth.

he steals the chopsticks from emiya, and for the moment, their charred dinner is forgotten by the side of their tangled fingers.

“mutt,” he demeans fondly when they part. there’s a hazy blush on cú’s face, spreading to marr the sharp curve of his mouth — all of it, emiya’s doing.

“that’s husband to you, asshole,” cú returns, equal parts feigned rancor and irritable affection.

emiya wasn’t lying; in the end, what is left of the _edamame_ is served with a simple cut of pork, sliced into flowering curls that fry with soft, hissing sounds within a minimal bed of sesame oil.

he admits that the slightly burnt smoke of the beans cuts through the deep taste of the meat well.

still, it’s not something cú needs to hear out loud.

emiya keeps it to himself with a kind of smug satisfaction as cú digs into dinner with the same voracious enthusiasm.

they have their nightly talk, banter, sniping flirtations out on the _engawa_ , beneath a half-cut eye of the moon, with the dogs chasing playful circles of black and white beyond their legs.

emiya sips on warm, bitter tea, and cú, a habitual cheap can of beer. for tonight, a single cigarette, burning slow and steady at the edge of his lip.

emiya nurses a lukewarm mouthful. “rin will be coming over for dinner this weekend.”

“oh? the little lady, ain’t it,” the delight in cú’s eyes makes jewels out of his slitted gaze, red and glistening, deep in the moonlight.

his grin makes the cigarette bob and trace a smoky arc through the air. “can’t wait, _archer_.” the imitation of her little title for emiya comes out too high and cracked in cú’s rough voice. absolutely terrible, and yet, distinctly, he’s somehow adopted the same self-assured tone, the one they both use too often, knowing they could do no wrong by emiya.

his favorite person and an insatiable, irritating self-imposed companion that refuses to leave his side. they’ll be sure to give him a loving headache this weekend.

for tonight, emiya steals cú’s cigarette with an admittedly dirty move. an open-mouthed kiss as distraction.

“no fair,” cú manages to say, sounding indignant, breathless, and begrudgingly stunned at the same time.

“the first time i tried to do that —” he glowers, even as he chases after the natural tug of the blinding smoke trail from emiya’s lips,

he only gets close enough for floating ash to hit his cheek, to suffer the tease of a heavy, laughing stare, purely mocking even through the veil of smoke, and then, he gives up on playing emiya’s coy game entirely.

he catches emiya by his jaw and swallows his choked surprise, following with a nip of teeth.

they draw apart, honest and hungry in the silence, as they watch each other.

“remember?” cú laughs, low, low in the anticipation of the night as the red slick of his tongue flashes, “you bit me.”

emiya doesn’t acknowledge such an event. instead, he breathes boldly, tracing cú’s sharp jaws with both hands. the cigarette remains, blunt and burnt out in his fingers, but when he brushes the edge of his mouth past cú’s ear, there is the lingering taste of sweet smoke:

“why don’t we go to bed?”

cú’s hands fall to his waist, tightening with no more intention to tease,

and that’s that for their post-dinner conversation.

-

in the aftermath of the failed kiss and panicked bite, nothing truly changes. things grow stilted between them, and yet, the distance only closes at an intense, inertia-defying rate.

cú comes over, day in and evening out, again and again, until emiya is packing leftovers neatly into cú’s hands and watching his ponytail sway over his back, a blue flame that burns into the low dark night.

when emiya finds himself lingering by the doorway, imagining, then remembering the reverse of these goodbyes, immediately looking forward to the hint of a lax greeting tomorrow - he’s caught in the trap of domesticism.

again, when cú has somehow gotten it into his mind that he should figure out how to cook in emiya’s kitchen, when he has dragged cú to the overflowing sink after dinner as punishment for burning all his pots,

he realizes with a violent sense of imminent disaster — this is pure domesticism. him and cú.

he looks at the clean soapy surface of the white dish, at the wide dumbstruck eyes of his own expression, and briefly, he contemplates smashing his forehead into it to be rid of such a terrible reflection entirely.

“ _che--_ come on,” before he realizes his violent intent, the plate-cum-weapon is plucked free from his fingers.

slippery, sliding away, the simple removal of his only defense and as he stands there with cramped, wet fingers, cú spears him with a toothy smile. “i get that you're a handsome bastard, but there are mirrors for that kind of blatant egotism you know?“

emiya hurts, ruptures the moment again. a literal cut as he jerks his finger across a knife hidden in the foaming depths of the sink. pointed, as if ready, for its sole purpose this evening.

thin blood, spilled into soap, it seems, changes things.

it is a surge of heat immediately, much more than it should be because his skin has grown soft and spoiled with easy pink wrinkles that bleed, cry so easily in the place of dry calluses.

cú doesn’t give him a chance to run this time.

his injury is no excuse; not when cú catches his hand with intent, with a blazing, close-mouthed hunger as he crushes emiya’s bleeding finger to numbness, a hold he is not allowed to break out of.

and then, he decides to kiss emiya for the second time.

in panic, in his haze of stinging soap and warm dishwater and the pulsing, pulsing alert from his finger, he wonders — who even kisses like this? there is no distinct process, no marked progression of mouth, then tongue, then the test of teeth.

cú kisses for the second time like he’s drunk on raw affection alone, with wild edges tearing past what should be an initial chaste, searching press of lips to make up for the misunderstanding of before and ease into a shy, teasing chase now—

it’s not like emiya is some pathetic highschool boy who would die at the thought of touching hands, but still. who bites their unwitting partner on their second kiss?

(the answer is: the one who holds a sullen grudge over being bitten during their first).

the unrestrained intensity of cú’s mouth is making strange sounds leak from his own throat, entirely unbidden. he sounds, strange, too urgent to truly be himself--he doesn’t know whether he’s asking for air or for cú to swallow him whole.

so instead, he slams his eyes shut.

a hand, the same wet fingers soaked in stinging soap draw brash tears past his cheekbone.

“don’t close your eyes - making that face now is, you’re not allowed to hide that expression anymore—”

“what expression-i’m-” _not hiding from you -_ but he’s hot, he’s _burning_ from such an accúsation, because he is, because how else is he supposed to cope with a cú that’s traded all his carelessness for a wild, single-minded focús.

he opens his eyes anyway,

to meet cú’s, and his red eyes that have always demanded emiya be anything—everything but a damn coward to his face. to the devastating face that wears his all desires, bared like the honest bone of teeth.

“you’re ashamed, that’s why, you’re always looking away—” a shaking breath threatens against his lips again, and now that emiya has opened his eyes, he’s compelled to keep looking and,

(this is where it grows unbearable)

he sees himself in cú’s stare, red and wide and yet slitted like a cat’s pupil,

and cú sees him. ~~~~

“don’t.”

“it’s okay, you know, i’d let you take your fill, it’s okay to want, to--to,” in a fiery stutter, cú surges into him again, finally making his declaration clear right into the shape of emiya’s broken mouth,

(“- _to be so hungry you could die in awe of your own appetite.”_ )

_and in the passing of night, my appetite is renewed once more_

perhaps, they kiss again (and again) after that, and perhaps, emiya lets himself hunger too openly after the light sheen of beer on cú’s lips.

but he is tentative, and above all else, there is still that part of him that pushes his brow together so tightly as he closes his eyes to cú’s returning kisses.

you’d think they’d never get any farther with emiya’s pathetic desires both easing and blocking the way — with evenings spent lounging in their toppled fortress of discarded beer cans, and cú sat purposefully, still, and not moving one inch closer, even as he squeezes his hand under the hard crook of emiya’s chin to try and turn the damn idiot towards him, to breathe him in and devour him, just a little further.

emiya doesn’t tend to budge, but when cú dares him with open press of his body, it’s the two of them that fall, together.

— it takes an agreement between two bodies to make the meeting, twisting press of one.

cú bites down his neck, through his clothes, under them, and then, he leaves the trail of his mouth, wet and stinging and grating with the threat of teeth between emiya’s shaking legs.

“what—what are you waiting for.” it’s too late for him to feel shame, spread like this, his own hand clammy in the shaking bend of his knee as he keeps himself open for cú.

funny thing is, the domestic lights of the kitchen are still on.

and in this stark glowing brightness, the hunger in cú’s red eyes is even brighter — as urgent as a wandering man who has been taunted with too many mirages on the desert horizon.

he’s always called cú mutt, affectionately hidden, vaguely exasperated.

now, the heavy slit of his gaze is truly something, something almost-animal. something finally revealing the insatiability of its appetite.

“just,” he breathes out, a low pleasurable roar. a feeling that he has waited for so long, that he has learned there is a certain great amount of pleasure to be gained in drawing out the torture for himself. “let me - enjoy the view.”

then, he grins, the bare line of his stomach rippling forward, preparing for a strike, almost serpentine,

with his open mouth, that endless loving appetite complete with lips and teeth, he tears the shroud of desperate loneliness from emiya’s body with an appetite that is inherently inhuman,

and perhaps, in that process, rent from the pathetic skin of his old self - the deep, dried well of his own selfishness bleeds out.

“emiya,” cú says, the sound and taste of his name. “emiya,” he pants, rutting forward with a savage delight.

 _emiya_ , he should want to say, _you irritating, insatiable bastard, for making me wait this long_ \--

because, he too holds cú, tastes blood beneath his stinging nails, locks around the pulsing heat in his empty belly, and he’s ravenous with a wide, gasping mouth that could bite down - all raw, raw and ripped open, a punctured force driving into him, and now, nothing but raw, consuming in return, in his desire to fill his body with something other than cold, stagnant rain.

in the end, when they truly finish as one, he is leaking a warm, overwhelming wetness. the repetitions of cú’s mouth laving over his skin is one that tightens the feeling over his body, new and pink and borne of gross, sticky desire.

“ ‘s pretty good, huh?” cú laughs and that sound, with its edges, its tumbling grains of sandpaper tender emiya’s body once more.

and all the while, as they come down from their roaring climax,

he is heaving, questioning where this tenderness could have come from - from _him_ , wet and tasting of salt granules upon his skin - and how, only something as raw as cú’s hunger could have ripped him open, exposed the vein of his desires to make him bleed. want, anew. ~~~~

.

“don’t bite,” emiya threatens through his own teeth as cú deposits him roughly onto their bed.

“won’t,” cú promises lazily, with a lascivious grin, a languid roll of his neck.

“feel free though,” he offers, the stretch of pale muscle at his shoulder taunted before emiya in the single plane of moonlight. entirely bare now, with only a few wild strands of blue flared out over his nape.

(he’s cut his long, tangled beauty of a tail this previous summer; a flirting act of spite perhaps against emiya’s perpetual habit of treating it like a leash during their fights, their fucks).

in their domesticism, they’ve become more tempered in their appetite, their desire to tear into each other lovingly.

god, but does he still all but devour him in their pleasure.

it is a dangerous thing to let cú’s mouth near his body, like this, unbridled at night, this close.

emiya has thought- jokingly -about a muzzle, but, in truth, it would probably result in the opposite effect.

after all, who’s to say - his husband has always been well-behaved, but he’s never been one for restraint.

emiya has indulged him too much anyway, spoiled him into habit, that, now, he latches onto emiya’s chest, sucks, kneads, and dares to turn those hungry eyes up to his with no shame.

there’s no point in warning again, when cú scrapes down, down, and takes his cock, with lips, tongue, and _teeth_ \- swallowing, whole.

the pleasure he draws from emiya, who will still reach habitually for cú’s short spikes, who has buried his fist over the pulse of his nape now, dragging the bruising point of his heel over cú’s shoulder, is loving and entirely vicious.

cú is nothing if not a thorough lover. he does not let go until emiya is wet and loose over his spasming stomach, until he begs, inscrutably, for relief, for more, at the brush of cú’s swollen lips between his legs.

cú likes emiya like this, made honest with his body spread open for him.

so then, it is his turn.

he pecks, smears a dirty kiss over emiya’s mouth, and he takes the rest of the night in pressing the tight crease of emiya’s thighs together and driving his desire right between the meat of them.

tomorrow is friday, and he is considerably gentle with the thin bites he scrapes over the arch of emiya’s ankles.

the friction of his cock is something else, but beneath him, exhausted, emiya still arches off the floor with his own insatiable appetite.

-

the creeping dawn is pale blue and clean in its arrival, but emiya wakes first, still dark and coated with warmth of - afterwards. with the jolting realization of cú’s hand clutching the swell of his lower stomach; secured, even in his dreams.

emiya arches, shaking in his yawning pleasure, into that immovable touch. the newly torn desire lingers over his skin, and as he stretches, it grows tight, a running vein, the essential tissue connecting muscle to bone.

and with cú curled over his side, there is no way he’s getting rid of it now.

.

emiya is awake 10 minutes early to 5:00.

there is that perpetual heat clinging to his side, hooked around his leg, locked around his waist. a heat that is soaked and tangible in the way that he rises and slowly, gingerly pulls their bare bodies apart.

the dogs are surprisingly quiet in the dawn of the open yard.

cú reaches with hard fingers towards the leftover space of him anyway.

emiya is soft in the spare time he’s found this morning. so, he gives in and touches cú, a hand tracing back his shorn hair, a hand that becomes a mouth to kiss his forehead in the yellow-grey light.

then, when it is 5:00, he neatens the futon over his own empty space, and cú rolls into it, burrowing further into sleep, the unconscious impression of whatever he’s chasing after, whoever he's baring his teeth in a grin for in his dreams.

and it is an indulgence that emiya allows himself now: cú, the appetite of the night before, and the lingering traces of it renewed, as a new day together begins.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!


End file.
